John Keats

Description

This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of John Keats (1795-1821). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this authoritative edition enables students to study Keats's work afresh, bringing his poetry and letters together in chronological order.

The backbone of this volume is provided by the poems published in Keats's lifetime--the three volumes, Poems (1817), Endymion (1818), and Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820), together with the small number of poems he published elsewhere. But a much larger body of Keats's writing was seen only in manuscript, if at all, by Keats's friends and family--the unpublished poems which include the dream vision, The Fall of Hyperion, his annotations of Shakespeare and Milton, and, above all, his extraordinary letters. These are placed at the date on which they were written or at their probable date.

This selection of poems, prose, and letters therefore creates a double time scheme. It places the poetry by which Keats was known to a frequently antagonistic reading public in his lifetime within the extensive biographical context provided by his unpublished poems and letters. This substantial body of manuscript evidence, some of it not discovered until the twentieth-century and none of it known to Keats's reading public, is now part of our understanding of his life and work, and allows us to follow his extraordinary intellectual, emotional, and artistic self-making in the three short years between Poems (1817) and 1820.

Explanatory notes and commentary are included to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life of Keats, and a Chronology.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chronology
A Note on the Selection and its Ordering
LETTERS AND POEMS 1814 TO 9 MARCH 1817
On Peace
Lines Written on 29 May, the Anniversary of Charles's Restoration, on Hearing the Bells Ringing
'Fill for me a brimming Bowl'
'As from the darkening gloom a silver dove'
'Oh Chatterton! how very sad thy fate'
Ode to Apollo
To Solitude (Examiner version, 5 May 1816)
'I am as brisk'
'Give me women wine and snuff'
'Oh! how I love on a fair summer's eve'
Keats to Charles Cowden Clarke, 9 October 1816
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (Examiner version, 1 December 1816)
Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition
'After dark vapors have oppressed our plains' (Examiner, 23 February 1817)
'God of the golden bow'
To Haydon, with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles (Examiner and Champion, 9 March 1817)
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles (Examiner and Champion, 9 March 1817)
POEMS (1817)
Dedication: To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
Poems:
['I stood tip-toe upon a little hill']
Specimen of an Induction to a Poem
Calidore: A Fragmnent
To Some Ladies
On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies
To ****
To Hope
Imitation of Spenser
['Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain']
Epistles:
To George Felton Mathew
To My Brother George
To Charles Cowden Clarke
Sonnets:
I To my Brother George
II To ******
III Written on the Day Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison
IV ['How many bards gild the lapses of time!']
V To a Friend who sent me some Roses
VI To G. A. W.
VII ['O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell']
VIII To My Brothers
IX ['Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here ad there']
X ['To one who has been long in city pent']
XI On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
XII On Leaving some Friends at an early Hour
XIII Addressed to Haydon
XIV Addressed to the Same
XV To the Grasshopper and the Cricket
XVI To Kosciusko
XVII ['Happy is England! I could be content']
Sleep and Poetry
LETTERS, PROSE, AND POEMS: EARLY MARCH 1817 TO APRIL 1818
On a Leander which Miss Reynolds my Kind friend gave me
Written on a Blank Space at the End of Chaucer's Tale of 'The Floure and the Lefe' (Examiner, 16 March 1817)
Keats to George and Tom Keats, 15 April 1817
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 17, 18 April 1817
Keats to Leigh Hunt, 10 May 1817
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 10, 11 May
'Unfelt unheard unseen'
'You say you love; but with a voice'
'Hither hither Love'
Keats to Taylor and Hessey, 10 June 1817
On the Sea (Champion, 17 August 1817)
'The Gothic looks solemn'
Keats to Fanny Keats, 10 September 1817
Keats to Jane and Marianne Reynolds, 14 September 1817
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 3 November 1817
'Think not of it, sweet one, so '
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 22 November 1817
'In drear nighted December'
'Before he went to live with owls and bats'
Mr Kean (Review in the Champion, 21 December 1817)
Keats to George and Tom Keats, 21, 27 (?) December 1817
To Mrs Reynolds's Cat
Keats's Marginalia in his Facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio (1808)
Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair
On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 23 January 1818
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 23 January 1818
Keats to George and Tom Keats, 23, 24 January 1818
Keats to John Taylor, 30 January 1818
'When I have fears that I may cease to be'
'O blush not so! O blush not so!'
'Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port'
'God of the Meridian'
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818
'Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb'
To the Nile
'Spenser, a jealous Honorer of thine'
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 19 February 1818 [includes 'O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind']
Keats to John Taylor, 27 February 1818
'Four Seasons fill the Measure of the year'
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 13 March 1818
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 14 March 1818
Keats's Marginalia in Paradise Lost (1807)
Rejcted Title-Page, Dedication and Preface to Endymion (19 March 1818) 00
'Where be ye going you Devon Maid'
'Over the hill and over the dale'
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 25 March 1818 ('Dear Reynolds, as last night I lay in bed')
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 8 April 1818
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 9 April 1818
Keats to John Taylor, 24 April 1818
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 27 April 1818
To Homer
ENDYMION: A POETIC ROMANCE (1818)
Preface
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
LETTERS AND POEMS: MAY 1818 TO JUNE 1820
'Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!'
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 3 May 1818
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 10 June 1818
Keats to Tom Keats, 25-27 June 1818
'Give me your patience Sister while I frame'
'Sweet sweet is the greeting of eyes'
Keats to Tom Keats, 29 June, 1, 2 July 1818 [includes 'On Visiting the Tomb of Burns']
'Old Meg she was a Gypsey'
Keats to Fanny Keats, 2, 3, 5 July 1818 [includes 'There was a naughty Boy']
Keats to Tom Keats, 3, 5, 7, 9 July 1818
'Ah! ken ye what I met the day'
'This mortal body of a thousand days'
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 11, 13 July 1818
'All gentle folk who owe a grudge'
'Of late two dainties were before me plac'd'
'There is a joy in footing slow across a silent plain'
'Not Aladin magian'
'Read me a Lesson muse, and speak it loud'
Keats to Mrs Ann Wylie, 6 August 1818
'Nature withheld Cassandra in the Skies'
Keats to C. W. Dilke, 20, 21 September 1818
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 22 (?) September 1818
Keats to J. A. Hessey, 8 October 1818
Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, 14, 16, 21, 24, 31 October 1818
Keats to Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1818
'Where's the Poet? Show him! show him'
'And what is Love?--It is a doll dress'd up'
Song ('Hush, hush, tread softly, hush, hush my dear')
The Human Seasons (Literary Pocket-Book version)
Sonnet to Ailsa Rock (published Literary Pocket-Book)
Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, 16, 17, 18, 22, 29 (?), 31 December 1818, 2-4 January 1819
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 22 December 1818
'I had a dove, and the sweet dove died'
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 8 March 1819
The Eve of St Mark
'Gif ye wol stonden hardie wight'
'Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell'
Keats to Joseph Severn, 29 March 1819
Keats to Fanny Keats, 12 April 1819
Keats to B. R. Haydon, 13 April 1819
Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, 14, 19 February, 3 (?), 12, 13, 17, 19 March, 15, 16, 21, 30 April, 4, 5 May 1819 [includes 'He is to weet a melancholy Carle'] [includes draft of 'La belle dame sans merci-']
'As Hermes once took to his feathers light'
La Belle Dame sans Merci : A Ballad
Song of Four Fairies: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water
Sonnet to Sleep
'If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd'
On Fame ('Fame, like a wayward girl')
On Fame ('How fever'd is the man')
Keats to Fanny Keats, 1 May 1819 [includes 'Two or three Posies']
Ode on Indolence
Keats to Mary-Ann Jeffery, 9 June 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 1 July 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 8 July 1819
'Bright Star, would that I were steadfast as thou art' (Earlier Version)
'Bright Star, would that I were stedfast as thou art' (Later Version)
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 11 July 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 15 (?) July 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 25 July 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 5, 6 August 1819
Keats to Benjamin Bailey (last leaf only), 14 August 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 16 August 1819
Keats and Charles Brown to John Taylor, 23 August 1819
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 24 August 1819
Keats to George and Georgiana Keats, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27 September 1819 [includes 'Pensive they sit, and roll their langid eyes']
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 21 September 1819
Keats to Richard Woodhouse, 21, 22 September 1819
Keats to Charles Brown, 22 September 1819
Keats to C. W. Dilke, 22 September 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 13 October 1819
Keats to John Taylor, 17 November 1819
'This living hand, now warm and capable'
'The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone'
'What can I do to drive away'
'I cry your mercy--pity-love!--aye, love'
To Fanny
Keats to Fanny Keats, 8 February 1820
Keats to James Rice, 14, 16 February 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, February (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, February (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, February (?) 1819
Keats to Fanny Brawne, February (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 27 February 1820
Keats to J. H. Reynolds, 28 February 1820
Keats to C. W. Dilke, 4 March 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, March (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, March (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, March (?) 1820
La Belle Dame Sans Mercy (Indicator version, 10 May 1820)
Keats to Fanny Brawne, May (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, late May/early June 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, June (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 25 (?) June 1820
A Dream, after Reading Dante's Episode of Paulo and Franscesca (Indicator version, 28 June 1820)
LAMIA, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF ST AGNES, AND OTHER POEMS (1820)
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Lamia
Isabella; or, the Poet of Basil
The Eve of St Agnes
Poems:
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to Psyche
Fancy
Ode ('Bards of Passion and of Mirth')
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Robin Hood: To a Friend
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Hyperion. A Fragment
LAST LETTERS AND POEMS
The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream
Keats to Fanny Brawne, 4 July (?) 1820
'In after time a Sage of mickle lore'
Keats to Fanny Brawne, August (?) 1820
Keats to John Taylor, 13 August 1820
Keats to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 16 August 1820
Keats to Charles Brown, August (?) 1820
Keats to Fanny Keats, 23 August 1820
Keats to Fanny Keats, 11 September 1820
Keats to Charles Brown, 30 September 1820
Keats to Mrs Frances Brawne, 24 (?) October 1820
Keats to Charles Brown, 1 November 1820
Keats to Charles Brown, 30 November 1820
Endmatter
Appendix 1: 'Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure'
Notes
Guide to Classical Names
Keats's Correspondents and Acquaintances
Index to Prose
Index of Titles and First Lines